by D. N. Hoxa
The wolf slipped inside the last doorway, and the darkness swallowed him completely. Damian went in behind him, and the next second, there was light. It chased the darkness away completely, revealing an even stranger room than the first.
This one was even smaller, but it looked more like a foyer, than an actual game room. To the side were three screens, all of them black, and a panel inside the wall. A keyboard was on it, only instead of letters, it had Gaenish symbols. The wall across from it was empty, but the one ahead was made of stone, the same stone as the one around the doorways. Gaenish symbols the same as the ones on the keyboard were engraved on it, some deeper, some barely scratches, and in the middle of it was a huge ball made of glass. Through it, all we could see was darkness.
Nikola growled, sniffing the glass, then licking it a couple of times.
“They were here,” Damian said, moving close to the walls, inspecting the engravings.
“Fuck,” I whispered. This was a fae game, and according to Carter, none of the other species knew shit about them. What the hell were Helen and her friends doing inside a freaking fae game?
“It’s a game,” Damian said. “Healer’s Journey, I think.”
He read the symbols, and some of them seemed to have meaning to him. To me, they looked like random drawings. Not one symbol was the same as the other. It must have been a bitch to learn that alphabet.
“It’s basically a puzzle. A labyrinth, too. There can be up to seven players, and they race through the labyrinth to find a…” His voice trailed off as he searched more symbols, tracing them with his fingers, until he stopped and sighed. “Of course.”
“What?” Emanuel and I asked at the same time.
“They race to find a tree called Yoranda. I’ve heard about it. It grows in Gaena and its leaves have incredible healing power,” Damian explained.
“Wait, if it grows in Gaena, how is it here?” Our worlds were very different from one another. I doubted we could plant what they had here, just like that.
“They must have transported the soil from Gaena,” Damian said. “Gaena’s soil is full of magic. It’s infused in every grain, which would make it perfect to plant the Treasure.”
I moved to the panel. “How do we turn this thing on?” I pressed a couple symbols on the keyboard, not really expecting anything to happen, but all three screens on the wall lit up. Not only that, but the symbols on the keyboard began to glow blue, and a humming of a machine started somewhere behind the engraved wall. The floor under the glass lit up, too, giving the entire thing an eerie glow. Then, our side of the ball slid open, but it was more like the glass was disappearing.
“Are we supposed to go in there?” Because it looked shady as hell.
“I think so,” Damian said, his eyes on the screens, and when I looked, I saw they were footage of cameras somewhere—and it didn’t look nice.
It was dark and there were walls and vines and engravings…but on the third screen there was a door with what looked like frosted glass. Light was coming from the other side, enough to make out the silhouette of a man standing in front of it.
“They’re already there,” Damian said. “They’re with the tree.”
“Let’s get going,” Emanuel said, and he and Nikola stepped into the glowing blue ball. I sighed. Dying in a labyrinth was not how I saw my ending, so I needed to stay focused. I dragged my feet all the way to them and stepped inside. Damian followed.
For a second, nothing happened.
“Are we supposed to press anything?” Emanuel asked and touched the glass of the ball with his fingers. Instantly, the glass reappeared and wrapped all around us, barely fitting us all. The wolf looked much bigger in here than it had out there.
Then, the ball spun.
It was a miracle I didn’t throw up. The ball spun fast and it took me completely off guard. Kit hung onto my jacket and my back, sinking his claws in my skin. My shoulder slammed against the glass when I lost my balance and my eyes squeezed shut. I didn’t see how many times we spun, but I did feel it when we stopped—just as violently as we’d started.
The taste of bile filled my mouth, coating my tongue, but I pushed it back and opened my eyes. The circle opened again with a hiss of air, and I could finally breathe a bit easier. Kit squeaked softly, unable to let go of me, probably as dizzy as I was feeling. The others walked out, Emanuel completely disoriented, but Damian and Nikola didn’t seem affected. I took a second to breathe in deeply before stepping out, afraid I’d fall on the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Luckily, I didn’t.
Darkness ahead. The corridor was wide, and as we watched, the only sound coming from Nikola when he growled, blue lights began to take shape on the walls. But they weren’t lights—they were some kind of ink that glowed bright, stretching and spreading onto the surface, creating identical shapes on either side. I though I’d seen all there was to see in Estird, but I was dead wrong. This place was something else entirely.
“Begin,” Damian read on them. “That’s what it says.”
The humming grew louder. The ground vibrated for a bit, almost as if something really heavy was moving somewhere ahead. I’d lie if I said I wasn’t afraid, but I was also excited, unable to get enough of my surroundings. Whatever happened next, I was going to take this memory to my grave.
Chapter Nineteen
We walked slowly at first. Nikola led the way with Emanuel, and Damian and I followed. Our footsteps were the only sound in that place, and it was unnerving, like the world outside those walls didn’t exist.
Before long, we reached a crossroads. The only light we had was coming from the glowing ink that slithered and twisted onto the stone walls, making it almost impossible to keep my attention forward.
We stopped and listened, but there was nothing out there. Just darkness and complete silence and four narrow corridors ahead. If there was a ceiling in this place, I couldn’t see it—just more darkness.
Then, Nikola turned and walked into the corridor on the right. We followed.
I don’t know how long we walked, but what felt like ten minutes later, the corridor separated into two. The strange humming sound came again, twice, and the ground vibrated with it, but it didn’t last for longer than a couple seconds. My palms were sweaty, but I didn’t dare put my daggers in my pocket. We stopped. Nikola sniffed. He decided to go right this time, too.
What happened next was so fast, none of us had a chance to prepare for it.
Emanuel and Nikola had just stepped into the corridor on the right, when a wall came out of nowhere, as fast as the glowing ink, and blocked them from our view completely. Then, the ground shifted, throwing us to the side, and I expected to hit the wall with my head, but the wall that had been there until a second ago, had disappeared.
Gritting my teeth, I kept my balance, moving to the side as the ground rose and rose—and Damian did the same. A screeching sound filled my ears and the wall slid in front of us again, right where it had been the first time.
I blinked and a ceiling came into view, LED lights spilling yellow onto us, illuminating every corner of the room we were in.
“What the hell?” I breathed as Kit squeaked in alarm.
The room we were in was perfectly square, stone walls on three sides, and on the fourth, it was made out of…glass? It kind of looked like it, but we could see nothing on the other side except a white background. The glass shifted while I stared at it, turning liquid before about twenty inch squares took shape on its surface. Big golden Gaenish symbols burned on each one of the squares, giving the room even more light.
“It’s part of the game,” Damian said, looking around the room, but there was nothing there, except a small silver plaque close to the glass, engraved with those strange symbols. No doors and no windows—just walls and what looked like a seat coming out of the one right across from the glass wall.
“Don’t tell me we’re locked in here.”
“We are for a few minutes,” Damian said, lookin
g at the silver plaque. Kit climbed down my body and began to sniff around at the corners, searching for a way out. “The walls shift every thirteen minutes, if I’m correct.” He turned to the golden symbols. “And this is the puzzle. We’re supposed to solve it to find the exit, faster than the other players.”
I sighed. “So we’re not going to die in here.”
Damian chuckled. “I don’t think so, no.”
“Great. Thirteen minutes it is.” Putting my daggers in my pocket, I went and sat on the piece of stone that was coming from the wall. It wasn’t comfortable by any means, but it beat standing.
“I have no idea what it says,” Damian said, shaking his head at the symbols, his sword still in his hand.
“That’s okay. They’ll be there when we get out.” Hopefully.
“The fae certainly know how to keep themselves entertained,” Damian said, and he went to sit on the floor, back against the wall.
Well, the fae fought wars since forever. No wonder this was what entertainment looked like for them. I sighed. This was not how I imagined this night to go, but okay.
Silence stretched in the room, broken only by Kit moving from one side to the other. I looked at Damian, still staring at the golden symbols, one hand resting over his knee, his sword right next to him.
I’d wanted to ask him something for a while now, but I just never seemed to have the courage. There were rumors about him, and I’d heard a few of them, long before I met him. Just what Carter had said last night—where there’s smoke, there’s fire. It got to me, even if I didn’t let it show. Lucas, and Kyle, Carter, even Malin and Jamie, all had stories to tell about Damian. I didn’t believe any of them were true, but I guess I just wanted to hear him say it. In here, we had thirteen minutes to kill, so I might as well get it over with it.
“Is it true?” I made myself say. “Are the rumors about you true?”
“Which ones?” Damian asked, not surprised in the least.
I shrugged. “I don’t know—the one where you killed a guy and sent the head to his brothers in a ribbon?” That was one of the last ones I’d heard.
Damian laughed and the sound vibrated right through me. It was so melodic, so rich, and it made me think of golden honey.
“No, I’m afraid I’ve never killed anyone for looking at me wrong, like your friend Kyle seemed to think. And I’ve never tied a head in a ribbon, either.”
The relief was instant. My lips stretched into a smile. I knew it. I knew they were all just bullshit.
“And the ten-year-old girl?” Lucas had claimed he’d bitten her until he almost killed her, and nobody knew why.
Damian’s face changed immediately, and he didn’t even meet my eyes. We were across the room from one another, but I could see him perfectly. For some reason, it made me hold my breath.
“She was nine,” he finally said.
My stomach rolled. Goose bumps rose on my forearms. “What…why would you bite a nine-year-old girl?”
“Because I needed to find her mother.”
My eyes closed on their own accord. I didn’t want to believe it, but when he said it with his own mouth, I saw no reason why he’d lie to me about it. Were the rumors true, then? I’d believed them once, but then I’d met him. I thought I knew him—and every time I thought that, something like this came along and knocked me on my ass all over again.
I couldn’t find anything to say so I just kept my mouth shut and tried really hard not to picture a little girl getting bitten by a vampire. God, she must have been terrified. Heat spread all over me like lava. I couldn’t even look at Damian.
“Why did you need to find her mother?” I heard myself say. Just that, I wanted to know, damn it. I needed to know.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and it pissed me off even more.
“Of course it matters.”
“It really doesn’t.”
“It matters to me!” I said, a bit louder than I intended.
He turned to me, his brows raised, like he was really surprised that I’d had the decency to say that. I sighed and lowered my head. I should have never brought this up in here. He wasn’t going to tell me, which almost made things worse.
But it was his turn to surprise me.
“It was 2003, I think. The Guild sent us to Toronto to find a woman who’d gone missing for over a week,” Damian said, his voice calm, not a hint of remorse anywhere. It was a mistake to get him to tell me. I almost asked him to stop. “She’d worked for the Guild before, but since she’d left, she’d gotten in the company of a very notorious coven of witches. She had information that the Guild didn’t want to be found, and they knew for certain that that’s why the coven had taken her. I spoke to her husband and her daughter, but none of them knew how she’d been taken, just that one morning, they’d woken up, and she hadn’t been there.
“We searched for two days and came up empty-handed. Powerful spells had been used to cover her tracks, and the Guild was about ready to give up,” Damian said, looking at the glass, but not seeing anything now. His colorful eyes were distant, and even though I hated what he was telling me, I still couldn’t stop listening. “But before I left that night, I wanted to check the house one last time, just in case I’d missed something. Everybody leaves trails behind. It just wasn’t possible that she’d disappeared into thin air. I was searching her bedroom when the girl came to me.” He smiled. “She had a glass in her hand that she’d filled with just a little blood. She’d cut her thumb, really deep, and had poured the drops in the glass, and she handed it to me.”
Holy shit.
“And?”
“I asked her what she was doing,” Damian said, still smiling. “She said she’d overheard her dad talking about me, about my Talent, and that she wanted me to drink her blood and find her mom. She was a really bright kid. Had these huge blue eyes and blonde hair—just like yours. She said she wasn’t going to let me go until I drank the blood she’d taken out for me and I found her mom.”
I’d completely forgotten where we were, and I couldn’t care less about what was happening outside at the moment. “And did you?”
“Well, I had to explain to her that my Talent didn’t work with blood already out of a body, so she insisted that I bite her. She claimed her mom told her strange stories sometimes, and she didn’t understand most of them, but she knew that I would. And when I said no, she was furious. She threw a tantrum like I’d never seen before. Even Moira was never that passionate about throwing books on the floor.” He laughed, and I found that I was smiling, too. “That’s when her father came to see why she was screaming. He seemed to agree with his daughter, too. Said that his wife had been with their daughter all day, every day, and if there was somebody who knew where she was, it would be the girl.” He shrugged. “So I bit her. I took a lot more than I should have, but I had no choice. I had to find all her memories and piece them together to figure out where her mother was being held, and there isn’t much blood in a nine year old to begin with.” Finally, he turned to me, shaking his head. “I’ve told you before, I’m a bigger monster than people know. I don’t know why you refuse to believe them, to be honest.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself, and my cheeks were flushed.
“Well, for starters, you saved a woman’s life, and you gave a young girl her mother back. You gave a husband his wife back. That’s not what monsters do, Mister Vampire. I’m afraid you’ve been lying through your teeth. Again.”
He laughed, too, but it sounded fake. “I almost killed a little girl.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I almost did. If I hadn’t stopped for just two seconds longer, she’d have died.”
“But she didn’t.” Do you see my point here? He helped that family. He helped them. And it shouldn’t have made me so fucking happy, but it did. I wanted to burst into tears. Good thing I still had a little self-control left.
“It’s against the law to bite children because they can’t legally give their
consent.”
“Since when do you care about breaking laws?”
He grinned. I had him there. We were breaking the law being here in the first place.
But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t have cared less because I’d been right. Damian Reed wasn’t who people thought he was. I had no doubt he’d done some bad things in his life, but they weren’t all bad. As much as he tried to hide it, he wasn’t really a bad guy.
“Why didn’t you stay that night?” he asked in a whisper, taking me by surprise. I turned to the floor again. I knew which night he was talking about. It was after the fight in Estird, right after I met Doctor Stephan Lane who’d told me the truth about what I was—something Damian had known all along. Not only that, but he’d accused me of lying to him, too.
“Because I couldn’t,” I said reluctantly. “Because you lied to me, and you called me a liar, and you’re the only person I haven’t lied to in my life.”
“I never called you a liar. I only assumed you hadn’t told me everything.”
“Well, I did. It was you who lied to me.”
“I thought you were better off not knowing.”
I laughed. “I’m always better off knowing the truth.” I’d lived my whole life in lies. I knew exactly what that could do to a person.
“But the truth is rarely pretty, little thief,” he said in wonder.
“That’s the thing about the truth: you don’t have to like it. Nobody does. It is what it is.” And no matter how hard you try to hide it, it always comes out in the end.
Damian turned to me. “My lying was never about you, little thief. It was about me. The truth is that I’m a selfish man. I felt guilt and I didn’t want you to know because guilt is weakness.” Slowly, he stood up. My heart was already soaring out of my chest, like it did when he looked at me like this, like he wanted nothing more than to devour me. “The truth is that I’ve had my years when I altered my image, my thoughts, my words to appease people’s opinions, but that time is gone. I haven’t cared about what others think of me in a very long time. And I was at peace with it.” He took a step closer to me and smiled sneakily. “But then I suddenly cared again, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t know what to do with it. So I lied. That’s the whole truth to it.”